A half century ago my graduate research was stimulated and influenced by the important unpublished Etheridgean thesis (Etheridge, “1959”, 1960). As an E.E. Williams student, I was an adopter, user, and later coiner of informal names for seemingly natural evolutionary groups in the diverse genus Anolis. In most cases, I was building upon (sometimes tweaking) the foundation of Etheridge’s classification. I believed then and believe now that the use of informal names for natural groups worked well for communicating evolutionary hypotheses both to specialists in our field, and to a broader audience of professional and amateur biologists who are likely not well informed about the nomenclatural history of these lizards.
Nicholson et al. (2012) believe otherwise. Here is their overview, page 13:
“The role of systematics is to advance our understanding of biological diversity in the natural world. Its practitioners are the guardians of the knowledge produced by past generations and responsible for the rational interpretation of new data and their implications. Within this framework, phylogenetic inference has consequences that we think bind its practitioners to produce a systematic classification of the studied organisms. Such a classification must be founded on the inferred evolutionary relationships and dictated by the canon of monophyly.”
I support that.
This note, then, is neither about the role of systematics, nor the interpretation of phylogenetic analyses (the Nicholson et al. presentation is comprehensive and extremely valuable). Rather it concerns their conclusion to the cited paragraph about the use of Anolis, as the generic name for the entire clade. They write:
“the single genus concept can be a hindrance to scientific communication regarding evolutionary events and directions of future research.”
I believe exactly the opposite. Specifically, I believe that the single genus concept enhances scientific communication and suggests directions of future research.